Nueva trova

Cuban song movement that emerged in the late 1960s, renewing the older trova tradition of the itinerant singer-songwriter with contemporary harmony, literary ambition and explicit engagement with the society created by the 1959 revolution. Nueva trova is built around the acoustic guitar and the exposed solo voice, although arrangements may add flute, strings, percussion or electric instruments. Its songs set original poetry and adapted verse by writers such as José Martí to melodies drawing on son, bolero, filin, folk and rock. The movement is defined less by a fixed sound than by the centrality of the authored song, in which personal reflection and collective history are treated as inseparable subjects.